But he wrote “so be it” if murderers and bombers were included in the reprieve in an incendiary letter to the Prime Minister seen by The Sun.

All 302 killings by troops during 30 years of conflict in Ulster are being reviewed, but some date back 40 years and critics say they are traumatising ex-troops now in their 70s and 80s.

Government lawyers have warned that protecting our veterans from prosecution would fall foul of European Human Rights laws leading to legal clemency for IRA members too.

But Mr Williamson argued that the terms of the Good Friday peace settlement and the “disproportionate focus” on historic British wrongs “amount to a de facto amnesty for terrorists already” in the public’s mind.

But on the eve of that listening exercise being launched in May, Mr Williamson wrote to the PM to say: “It is clear to me that our veterans need the protection of a statute of limitations in respect of Troubles-related offences.

“If this means a wider amnesty, so be it: in the public mind the effect of the Good Friday Agreement sentencing reforms, the ‘On the Run’ letters which inadvertently led to the failure of the prosecution of John Downey for the 1982 Hyde Park bombings, and the apparent disproportionate focus of the current investigation on security forces amount to a de facto amnesty for terrorists already.”

He added: “It is time to give our veterans the protection they deserve.”

GAVIN WILLIAMSON’S LETTER TO THERESA MAY:

It is clear to me that our veterans need the protection of a statute of limitations in respect of Troubles-related offences.

If this means a wider amnesty, so be it: in the public mind the effect of the Good Friday Agreement sentencing reforms, the ‘On the Run’ letters which inadvertently led to the failure of the prosecution of John Downey for the 1982 Hyde Park bombings, and the apparent disproportionate focus of the current investigation on security forces amount to a de facto amnesty for terrorists already.

It is time to give our veterans the protection they deserve.

Yours ever,

Gavin

Gavin Williamson left red-faced after he is ‘heckled by his own Siri’ in the House of Commons